The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hearing set on mandatory student vaccinations
Bills would end longstanding religious exemption in state
At a moment in the coronavirus pandemic when most of the state is still clamoring for a chance to get vaccinated, a legislative committee on Tuesday will hold a public hearing that a year ago galvanized thousands of protesters against mandatory inoculations for school-age children.
Unlike last year, when 4,000 people, mostly parents and children, filled the Legislative Office Building for 24 hours of testimony, this year’s General Assembly’s Public Health Committee hearing will be virtual, with registered speakers participating via Zoom and the audience watching on the legislative YouTube channel and CT-N.
Committee leaders are planning on starting at 9 a.m. and finishing in time for a late breakfast on Wednesday. The hearing is on two proposed bills, each aimed at ending the state’s more than 60-year-old religious exemption for school vaccinations — traditional vaccinations, that is, unrelated to the COVID-19 vaccination, which is not mandatory.
State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chairman of the committee, said one bill would allow unvaccinated students to remain in seventh grade and above if they have gone through the lower grades without being inoculated for typical diseases including mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio.
The other bill would simply terminate non-medical exemptions for all students, public and private, from daycare and pre-kindergarten through college. In recent years increasing numbers of parents have been using the religious exemption, while more schools have been showing reduced levels of vaccinations, worrying public health officials.
“We fully expect to go 24 hours,” Steinberg said, adding that the larger cohort of unvaccinated students is at the elementary school level. Asked about pursuing the legislation this year as the pandemic is still raging throughout the country and tens of thousands of state residents are getting vaccinated, Steinberg said he hopes that the virus would prompt more people to believe in medicine amid the sickness and the nearly 7,400 fatalities since last March.
“We are hopeful that the experience of the past year would make people more eager,” he said in a Friday phone interview. “I have to say I am somewhat disappointed,
as people are as dug-in as before and continue, in my mind, to ignore the science and the authorities and stick to what I say to a large degree is misinformation.”
Registration to speak at the hearing closed at 3 p.m. Monday.
Republicans have filed a bill that would allow parents to claim “moral or philosophical” grounds to not have their children vaccinated. It could likely become an amendment later on the House and Senate floor as the bill moves forward. Last year, similar legislation was approved by the committee along party lines, but was abandoned when the legislature shut down for the rest of the session on March 12.
State Sen. Saud Anwar, a South Windsor physician
who specializes in critical care and lung diseases and supports the legislation, said Friday that the pandemic puts the issue into perspective.
“Prevention of infectious disease could not be more important and more clear than at the present time,” he said. “Having these conversations to protect and prevent children from getting infectious diseases are very important right now. There are still segments of our population who not believe that COVID is a real thing and that people who have died. Some still believe they have a right not to wear a mask, even if it kills their parents, grandparents and neighbors. For the protection and prevention in our broader community we
need to have this conversation.”
In prepared testimony filed with the committee, Rabbi Michael Friedman of Temple Israel of Westport, said the arrival of COVID vaccines are a blessing that should be embraced. “A long-established core value of our Torah and Jewish tradition is the importance of protecting and preserving our health, well-being and safety,” he wrote. “We are obligated to do everything possible to protect life and are obligated to put the preservation of life above all other mitzvot (religious commandments).”
But many remained opposed to being forced to have kids vaccinated for school.
“I come from a generation that had mumps, measles, whooping cough, flu, chicken pox. It really was no big deal,” wrote Helene Burgh of North Branford. “Why is it now? A vaccine should be a choice. This bill is ridiculous. And should not even be a consideration. Freedom trumps tyranny in America. At least the America I remember.”
“Everyday a new freedom is stripped from us, and seems that everyone ‘currently’ in government is complicit,” wrote Jessica Casper Matri of Westport. “Have you no morals, no regard, no fear of being on the wrong side of history?”
Sarah Dagon Goldman of Tolland, a public school teacher and mother, wrote that she understands that opponents of the bill believe it might infringe on their freedom to make decisions about their children’s health.
“However, choosing to exempt one’s children from vaccinations in cases other than medically necessary situations affects others and extends beyond one’s personal freedoms to infringing upon the freedoms of others,” Goldman wrote. “Those that are immunocompromised, too young to receive full doses of vaccines, or other medically necessary abstentions from vaccines will be put at-risk if the rates of vaccinations against diseases continues to decline with the allowance of the religious exemption for vaccines.”
More than 110,000 doses of COVID vaccine have been administered in the state’s long-term care facilities since late December, and state official estimate they are about two-thirds of the way to completing vaccinations of those residents.
Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week show that 110,016 vaccines have been administered through the long-term care facility partnership through which CVS and Walgreens pharmacists have vaccinated residents staff at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Connecticut.
First doses accounted for 70,237, and around half of those who received a first dose have received their second. The CDC data doesn’t differentiate between nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
State officials have not released detailed data on vaccinations of people in long-term facilities other than to say they believe 90 percent of the residents have gotten at least a first dose and about 60 percent of the staff have been vaccinated.
DPH spokeswoman Maura Fitzgerald said it’s “difficult to calculate vaccination rates among staff or residents in long-term care facilities” because the numbers fluctuate daily — particularly in facilities with short-term rehabilitation wings with constant turnover.
She said the state doesn’t have the exact number of staff that work in each long-term care facility, doesn’t have the exact number of residents in residential care homes on any given day and that a constant influx of unvaccinated residents will bring down vaccination rates.
Fitzgerald said that at the beginning of last week, almost all nursing home residents have had at least one dose of vaccine. Around 70 percent of residents have received their second doses.
As for nursing home staff, DPH estimates over 70 percent of staff have received at least one dose, and over 50 percent of staff have received two doses.
In assisted living facilities, “almost all residents have received at least one dose of vaccine,” Fitzgerald said. With assisted living staff, “over 50 percent have received at least one dose of vaccination, and seconddose clinics also are ongoing.”
The vaccination of longterm residents started in December and is winding down, at least in Connecticut, with most facilities expected to finish three rounds of vaccines by the end of this month.
In Connecticut, there are about 17,000 nursing home residents and about 25,000 staff, who were among the first in the state to be vaccinated.
The numbers are less definitive in assisted living facilities, which do not face the same scrutiny that nursing homes do from the state Department of Public Health.
The state emphasized vaccinating the nursing home residents because of the devastating impact the virus has had on that population, with 3,873 deaths since March. There have been 471 deaths in assisted living facilities, bringing the total of COVID deaths in long-term care facilities to 4,361 as of Feb. 9.
More staff vaccinations
Earlier this month, the state DPH announced that it would allow nursing home workers to get their first vaccine during the third round of vaccinations at their facilities — as long as they made arrangements on their own to get the second shot a month later.
Several providers contacted Thursday said that the extra opportunity to get the shot has led to an increase in staff vaccinations.
David Skoczulek, Vice President of Business Development for iCare Health Network, said two of its facilities now have more than 75 percent of their staff vaccinated. All of iCare’s facilities have finished their third round of shots, and he estimates as many as 50 staff members got their first dose of vaccine this time around.
“It behooves the staff to get vaccinated beyond just the safety of themselves, their families and the residents,” Skoczulek said. “As time goes on, it will mean more freedom of movement and unit assignment, less testing and, hopefully one day, less use of PPE.”
State officials were concerned because the initial response to the vaccination among nursing home staff was tepid. In some cases, less than 40 percent of employees got vaccinated in the first round, but numbers have increased as others have seen that the vaccine didn’t affect their co-workers.
Mag Morelli, president of LeadingAge Connecticut, which represents about 40 non-profit assisted living facilities, said the participation in those facilities has been at about the same levels as nursing homes.
“The residents are getting vaccinated — they have been waiting for it,” Morelli said.
Morelli said she believes the timing of the vaccine rollout had some effect on staff participation, because nursing home residents were the first people to get vaccinated — many right before the holidays.
“They started really early, and you could see people wanted to wait,” Morelli said. “But we really have seen an uptick recently in staff (vaccinations) as well.”
COVID numbers going down
The large-scale vaccinations of nursing home residents has led to a marked decrease in the number of infections in the facilities — and lately a decrease in deaths as well.
For the week of Feb. 3-9 there were only 52 new infections and 17 deaths — the lowest total of deaths in at least a month. The previous week, there were 101 new infections among nursing residents and 35 deaths.
The last week of January, the state recorded 166 new cases and 66 deaths among nursing home residents. When vaccinations started in late December, the state was averaging over 100 deaths a week.
Cases also have been decreasing among nursing home staff. There were 57 new infections among staff last week, down from 87 the previous week and 153 the week before that.